The concentration of wealth and attention on a tiny number of globalised superclubs is leading to moments of remarkable drama and quality – but at a terrible price
A recent Set-Piece Menu podcast eloquently made the case for fandom as a broad church. When the Premier League is marketed so aggressively all over the world, when overseas television rights bring it so much revenue, when players and managers and owners are often foreign, they argued – quite reasonably – who is to deny the travelling supporter from Baltimore or Bangalore their seat in the stadium, the right to call themselves a fan? All of that made sense.
On an intellectual level I agreed with it. It fitted my general liberal, globalised worldview. And yet, I realised, viscerally I disagreed: of course, I paid lip service to all that but actually I regarded my form of fandom as being more authentic and more important.
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